James Rebanks on the Shepherd's Life

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4.7 • 4.3K Ratings

🗓️ 3 July 2023

⏱️ 74 minutes

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Summary

James Rebanks's family has raised sheep in the same small English village for at least four centuries. There are records of people with his same last name going back a few hundred more. Even his sheep are rooted in place: their DNA is from Viking times. It's enough to make anyone feel insignificant--and according to Rebanks, that's a wonderful thing. Listen as the author of The Shepherd's Life speaks with EconTalk's Russ Roberts about the deep pleasures and humbling privilege of being a sheep farmer.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Econ Talk, Conversations for the Curious, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty.
0:07.8	I'm your host, Russ Roberts of Shalem College in Jerusalem and Stanford University's Hoover
0:12.7	Institution.
0:13.7	Go to econtalk.org where you can subscribe, comment on this episode and find links down
0:18.6	the information related to today's conversation.
0:21.4	You'll also find our archives, but every episode we've done going back to 2006.
0:26.8	Our email address is mail at econtalk.org.
0:30.3	We'd love to hear from you.
0:32.3	Today's June 7th, 2023, and I guess is author and sheep farmer, James Rebex.
0:44.0	Our topic for today is the life of the sheep farmer depicted in his first book, The Shepherd's
0:49.0	Life, which was published in 2015.
0:51.7	What we may also get to is 2020 book, English Pastoral.
0:55.7	James, welcome to econtalk.
0:57.3	Yeah, thank you for helping me.
1:00.1	The Shepherd's Life is a incredibly beautiful book about what it's like to raise sheep,
1:05.2	about what it is to be a son to a father and the father to a daughter or a son and
1:10.7	what it is to be close to the land and the course of daily life.
1:14.2	It's quite moving and it's unbelievably informative for most of us who don't know much about
1:20.7	sheep farming.
1:21.7	Our goal today is to try to give listeners some idea of what that's about.
1:26.9	I'm going to start with the fact that your family has been in the same general area, which
1:31.6	is the Lake District of England for a very long time.
	...

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